Landclass success! A few questions though ...

[Guest]

After messing with this all weekend long, I am happy to say that I finally got a landclass working for my area (Southern New England), and have experimented with a few different city textures etc and have gotten decent results. I owe a ton to Orlando, his website and landclass tables, as wellas some of the other frequent posters here on the landclass subject.My first question: does the landclass source .raw file HAVE to be256x256? My source TIFF is around the size of 13500x10125. I'mprobably losing resolution by resizing down to 256x256, but bydoing it in PSP, i'm probably resampling better than the resampletool does. Next question: no matter what city/urban textures I choose, I cannotget autogen buildings to work. I do get some autogen trees in therural/forest areas though. Anyone have any experience with this?Are there particular texture numbers from Orlando's tables thatwill generate the buildings? The textures I chose for the citiesare marked as such in the tables as having autogen. Maybe mycustom mesh for this area is messing things up?Last question: At the northern border of my landclass, instead oftransitioning directly to the default landclass, I get a untexturedgrey line accross the entire northern border of my landclass. Mysource TIFF does not seem to be missing colors on the northernborder. Any suggestions? Again, a big thanks goes out to all the regulars here.. your information has made this project go pretty easily. I may share my landclass area .bgl with the community if I can workout these details.

[Guest]

>My first question: does the landclass source .raw file HAVE >to be >256x256? My source TIFF is around the size of 13500x10125. >I'm >probably losing resolution by resizing down to 256x256, but >by >doing it in PSP, i'm probably resampling better than the >resample >tool does. Actually resample does a better job so I never resize the image. It's better to do this again with the original file size.>>Next question: no matter what city/urban textures I choose, >I cannot >get autogen buildings to work. I do get some autogen trees >in the >rural/forest areas though. Anyone have any experience with >this? >Are there particular texture numbers from Orlando's tables >that >will generate the buildings? The textures I chose for the >cities >are marked as such in the tables as having autogen. Maybe my >custom mesh for this area is messing things up? Do you see the urban textures but not the autogen buildings? Are you looking into a particular area or in several places? Do you have autogen settings to maximum?>>Last question: At the northern border of my landclass, >instead of >transitioning directly to the default landclass, I get a >untextured >grey line accross the entire northern border of my >landclass. My >source TIFF does not seem to be missing colors on the >northern >border. Any suggestions? Don't use the SampleIsCentered instruction in the INF file. Also, you are probably getting errors when the textures are loaded. Check the INF file.

[Guest]

>Actually resample does a better job so I never resize the >image. It's better to do this again with the original file >size. Huh.. it does a better job? Ok, so then my next question is,do I set my image size of 13500x10125 in the .inf file, ordo i continue to use 256x256, as resample.exe will just tearit down to size anyways?>>Do you see the urban textures but not the autogen buildings? >Are you looking into a particular area or in several places? >Do you have autogen settings to maximum? Yup, I see the urban and city textures fine. I flew over severalcities in RI and CT and did not see one autogen building. Plenty of trees though. I have autogen set to "Normal" butwith default fs2k2 landclass, I usually see plenty of buildingsaround. Do I need to crank this setting up?>>Don't use the SampleIsCentered instruction in the INF file. >Also, you are probably getting errors when the textures are >loaded. Check the INF file. I'm not using SampleIsCentered in the .inf file. And I'm not gettingthe texture missing errors either. I do get those errors if I forgetto set the image to greyscale before exporting to .raw format, soI do know the errors you mean. Thats the funny thing, I'm gettingno errors at all... just a tile-wide grey line accross the northernborder. Maybe this will go away if I do not resample the imagemyself in the first question :)Again, thanks for your help!Matt

[Guest christian]

Hi Matt,Your image size can be anything but will be resampled to 257x257. That's right, 257 NOT 256! I usually use resample and extract the 257x257 data section afterwards and do some final editing on that. The extraction process is a bit complicated though, so I won't go into details here. I suspect resample.exe is just picking points every so and so distance, so making your own 257x257 image may be better. Also, there is no image size in the inf file. You have to put in the values that match your input image.I have the same problem. It happens when I switch sceneries on and off, autogen is gone. It's the stupid performance scaling of FS2K2, get a faster computer and it won't happen. Nothing to worry about though. In most cases your autogen will show, if you just fly over it (without changing sceneries, you'll have to restart FS2K2, if you do!). You probably get blurry textures often too...Your grey line is there because you didn't fill the full LOD quadrant. Recalculate your values and you should be set.Cheers, Christian

[Guest]

Here's a sample inf file for an NLCD input land cover raw file at its original size:--&l;Destination&r;DestDir = "."DestBaseFileName = "merge"NorthLat = 36.5625SouthLat = 33.75WestLong = -123.75EastLong = -120.00&l;Source&r;Type = CLASSU8SourceDir = "."SourceFile = "LC_N12W32.raw"Lat = 36.5625Lon = -123.75NumOfCellsPerLine = 13500NumOfLines = 10125CellXdimensionDeg = .000278CellYdimensionDeg = .000278--Make sure you made the LOD of 5 calculations correctly for the boundaries. I have a calculator in the web page. The input file size can be anything as long as you have the correct LOD of 5 region and set the CellXdimensionDeg, NumofCellsPerLine, etc., set to the right values (as above).Set your autogen to maximum density, but Christian's point about a performance issue is a valid one.

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi all!Matt... I get no grey lines at my northern border in csf2 or FS2002. Just a defined transition. I used a 256 x 256 bitmap as described in my homemade desktop post. Also, I had no need to revert to a greyscale. I just saved the image as a raw file. As long as it's RAW, there is no color data saved by PSP... just a 256 x 256 grid. I won't second quess Christian. The array may well be 257 x 257. I'll have to try that... 256 x 256 just seems so tidy. :)Here's my INF:{Destination}WithSeasons = 1NorthLat = 47.8125SouthLat = 45.0000WestLong = 7.5000EastLong = 11.2500DestDir ="C:WINDOWSDesktopSwiss"DestBaseFileName = "test" {Source}Type = ClassU8SourceDir = "C:WINDOWSDesktopSwiss"SourceFile = "LCE03N17a.raw"Lat = 47.8125Lon = 7.5000NumOfCellsPerLine = 256NumOfLines = 256CellXdimensionDeg = 0.0146484CellYdimensionDeg = 0.0109863ScaleinMeters = 1.0Only the lat-long lines, and source-dest lines need be changed for any INF at LOD5...( The curly brackets also need to be square brackets )

[Guest christian]

What have you done?!? That transition line is very weird. The textures usually mix into each other, so I haven't seen this line beforehand. :-lolCheers, Christian

[rhumbaflappy 113]

The Line ( now compiled at 257 x 257 ).:-eek I think the line is due to my use of a severely restricted palette, used for CFS2 testing.

[Guest]

Ok, I'm making more progress now.. I redid the .raw at the original source size of 13500x10125. I alsotook a second look at the extents of my source tiff, and I was offa bit.. i was using the extents that Microdem was giving me. I changed the extents to the exact locations from the USGS data fromthe downloaded geotiffs. That got rid of the mysterious northerntextureless border.. it transitions pretty well now and it isdefinately not obvious while flying. I'm still getting tons of autogen trees, but NO autogen houseswithin the areas of my landclass. As soon as I cross the borderinto the default landclass, I see just as many trees and plentyof buildings. I'm really not sure that my system performance iscausing this. I've disable ATC planes altogether, lowered themax visibility distance, etc, and was running with a solid 20-25framerate, and I locked it at 19. My specs are: AMD athalon 900, 492M ram, Kryo I 64Mb video(equivalent to GF2, but renders 32 bit mode natively on chip),half way decent WD ide drive with DMA transfers enabled. I'm very happy with the landclass as it is now. I'm just reallycurious as to why the autogen buildings arent working in myarea, and they work perfectly fine in the default areas. Thiswont stop me from using the scenery.. I'm just wondering if I'vefound a bug of some sort. Thanks again for the help guys... its great to see the spirit ofthe community alive, considering all the crap being thrown aroundin the other forums (POSKY etc.). Matt

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Matt.Graet news about your success. Wish I could help with the autogen thing. All I know is that the autogen is tied to the filename. Could you post a jpeg or two? Also, could you tell us the tiff source you used, and how you viewed/manipulated the data?:-beerchug

[Guest]

Well... time to give new life to this post again. I

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Daniel.Try this LOD5 Calculator:Orlando Sotomayor's LOD5 CalculatorYou can save the file as html, then use it without being online!P.S.I've had hard edges to my Landclass experiments as well.:(

[Guest]

Hello :-lol Rhumbaflappy, read again my post :-lol. I actually used the Orlando's Calculator!So you have the same problem... Hope someone can help us... :-(--Daniel R. Careri

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Daniel.:-lol I need to get glasses!For an LOD5 landclass:---------------------------------------------------------If...NumOfCellsPerLine = 257NumOfLines = 257then...CellXdimensionDeg = 0.0145914CellYdimensionDeg = 0.0109435X -> {3.75 degrees longitude} / {257 cells} = 0.0145914Y -> {2.8125 degrees latitude} / {257 cells} = 0.0109435---------------------------------------------------------If...NumOfCellsPerLine = 256NumOfLines = 256then...CellXdimensionDeg = 0.0146484CellYdimensionDeg = 0.0109863X -> {3.75 degrees longitude} / {256 cells} = 0.0146484Y -> {2.8125 degrees latitude} / {256 cells} = 0.0109863---------------------------------------------------------P.S.Here's a Swiss INF I used for a RAW 8-bit datafile of 256 X 256:{Destination}LOD = 5NorthLat = 47.8125SouthLat = 45.0000WestLong = 7.5000EastLong = 11.2500DestDir ="C:WINDOWSDesktopSwiss"DestBaseFileName = "test"{Source}Type = ClassU8SourceDir = "C:WINDOWSDesktopSwiss"SourceFile = "Swiss.raw"Lat = 47.8125Lon = 7.5000NumOfCellsPerLine = 256NumOfLines = 256CellXdimensionDeg = 0.0146484CellYdimensionDeg = 0.0109863If you use a 257 X 257 source, change the cell dimensions as noted above.:)Also...I don't have time for a few days to experiment, but I noticed while creating mesh files, that I needed to "round up" the last few decimal places ( of the cell dimensions ), to get my mesh files to join without a gap! For example:CellXdimensionDeg = 0.008333333333CellYdimensionDeg = 0.008333333333needed to be...CellXdimensionDeg = 0.0083334CellYdimensionDeg = 0.0083334Maybe the resample program has a rounding error for which we must compensate... so try to round up the cell dimensions slightly, and see if the "hard edge" of the landclass BGL disappears.There was some discussion by Christian Stock, and others regarding the cell dimension values of mesh needing to be, for example:X -> {# degrees longitude} / {# cells - 1} = CellXdimensionDegY -> {# degrees latitude} / {# cells - 1} = CellYdimensionDeg...due to the numerical difference between the cellular data and verticies surrounding that data. But maybe it's just an M$ rounding math error after all!:-beerchug

[Guest GerrishGray]

Hi MattWith regards your missing Autogen objects, where have you installed the landclass BGL? The symptoms you describe with just a few trees showing are typical of the effect you get when you put landclass BGL's in the wrong place. There are three ways you can successfully install them and not kill the Autogen:[ol][li]Just put the landclass BGL in the main scenery folder. It should work fine there, and the LOD setting will ensure that it overwrites the default stuff in worldlc.bgl[/li][li]Or you can put it in a scenery folder of its own with the usual entry in scenery.cfg. However, unless you use method 3 below, you must not create a matching ..texture folder, not even an empty one! So you probably end up putting the Landclass BGL in a folder by itself, which is a bit of a waste but at least means that you can turn it on and off at will ...[/li][li]Finally, the "ultimate" installation technique is to put it in a ..scenery folder of its own, create a matching ..texture folder, and copy (not move) all the .agn files from the scenedbworldtexture folder into the new ..texture folder. This has some advantages if you want to edit the local Autogen patterns without affecting the rest of the scenery.[/li][/ol]Hope this helps solve your problem ...Gerrish